found_drama

When we left off, we had basically concluded that Microsoft Word was out of the running. Content creation was relatively easy but the output was ugly (technically-speaking) and the publication problem itself was totally unsolved. So (I said to myself) what about [tag]iWeb[/tag]?

The disclaimer (of course) is that (1) I’m admittedly biased toward the Mac and (2) we stated pretty much at the outset that Mac-based solutions were fair game. Anyway, moving on…

To listen to the marketing hype, iWeb sounds like the way to go. Super simple and all that. If it’s anything like iTunes or iPhoto then we are in great shape. So let’s give it a trial run.

The first warning here is that it prompted me with the familiar Keychain Access dialog, looking for permission to access my .Mac account. Except that I let my .Mac account lapse … 3 years ago? A while ago. So that’s a little confusing but OK… It tries to make it simple by giving me this:

In short: pick a design and a page to start with. Alrighty… I pick the “Notebook” theme and the “Welcome” page design to start playing around with. The first thing that I need to remind myself here is that I need to think like my audience and not like the web professional that I believe myself to be. That said, what would I want to do? Click on things. So I try that and I get responses from just about anything: text fields, titles, images… I just type things in and they change and right-click and change layers and … well, I just go nuts. In about 4 minutes, without really trying, I’ve turned the design into this:

Yep. I’ve put text AND an image overlapping a Quicktime movie. I wanted to just stick the Quicktime movie in there under the text but that was apparently asking too much. Anyway, now that I’ve created my masterpiece with relative ease (for better or worse): what about saving and publishing? Ah there it is:

Bottom left corner: Publish. Click:

Wisely, it asks me about whether or not I understand copyright… And then it promptly flakes out. Because I don’t have a .Mac account. Blast! *sigh*

No, the Apple website has some nice tutorials on using iWeb but they seem to have obfuscated the information about how to use iWeb to publish anywhere other than on their .Mac service. “Publish to a Folder…” exists under the File menu but that still only gets us part way there. Ah… Drag. What next? Is there no solution to this problem?

currently playing: Lamb “Lusty”

Let’s continue and see if we can’t identify a contender or two. In our last episode, we laid down a few ground rules with respect to the application we envision as our goal by digging into the context of our subject-slash-target audience. In this episode, let’s think about our content creation tool and give only a little bit of thought to publication. Our question this time around:

How easy will it be to make make our document?

Let us begin with the web professional’s worst nightmare: Microsoft Word.

Why even consider Word? Any web professional knows that it is probably THE WORST TOOL for creating web content in the history of the web. The only way it could even remotely produce anything worth while is by turning off all of the rich text features, hand-coding your document, and saving as plain text, right?

Let’s remember our subject. Our subject does not want to perform hand-coding or think at all about things like web standards. We want to reduce this to “Save” and “Publish” or (better yet) just “Save”.

So can Word help us here? Perhaps. Build a little content (i.e., type paragraphs and notes) and “Save As…” We’ve even got (roughly equivalent) versions on both of the platforms that we mentioned in our ground rules. So we’re off to a good start. (You can almost see why I decided to start here?)

But we quickly run into problems starting with “Save As…”

1. “Save As…” isn’t an effective publisher. “Save As…” gives us the option to save the content in a facsimile of the HTML format but only locally. If the web share could be mounted as a network volume then that would solve this problem. Just “Save As…” and then select the right drive/volume. But (for those GTD’ers out there) this depends quite a bit on context.
2. The code really isn’t very pretty in the final analysis. Its rendering across browsers was pretty consistent (e.g., Camino, Firefox, Safari) but the source code left me cringing. While the sanctity of the output was not one of our pre-conditions (and certainly not something our subject will much care about), I cannot in good conscience make the recommendation after seeing it. It just feels like a disaster waiting to happen. (We have a reputation to hold up here, after all.)
3. Adding an image was easy enough. Command+C, Command+V. (Or replace “Command” with “Control” if that’s your bag…) Video was a no-go though. No command+c, command+v. No “Insert from file….” You could probably insert a link. But that assumes you know (or can figure out) what the link will be once the video is up on the web server. Points off.

Our verdict? Simple to make HTML content but quickly falls apart when it comes to anything besides text and images; and not even remotely an answer to the publication questions. So (thankfully? predictable?) Word is out.

Up next? iWeb?

currently playing: Massive Attack “Safe From Harm”

Following up on my pre-[tag]MacWorld[/tag] post…:

• [tag]iLife ‘06[/tag] is a given - - duh, zero points
• minor revisions all around - - of course (some arguably major), zero points
• with some new deployment of FrontRow and maybe Photo Booth - - FrontRow made it into the “[tag]MacBook Pro[/tag]” but is as yet not all-Mac-wide…
• the [tag]iWeb[/tag] thing is probably a red herring - - Nope. It was real. Zero points.
• the Podcast Studio thing is a minor possibility - - Rolled into GarageBand. Partial credit.
• (but that’s just me, I don’t “get” the podcast meme) - - I still don’t get “podcasting” (but I don’t get talk radio, either) but it’s an honorable mention because now we get PHOTOCASTING! (Points?)
• [tag]iWork ‘06[/tag] we’ll see, too - - Duh? Points.
• Keynote will get a minor update - - Easy. Points.
• Pages a major update (but not the one it needs) - - Sort of? Partial credit.
• and we’ll get “Numbers” - - Wrong. Points off!
• Hardware [...] first round of Intel hardware will be the iBooks… - - Well it wasn’t a “Powerbook” but I don’t know if the “iBook” prediction counts. Zero points.
• …and maybe (just maybe) they’ll be stuffed with flash memory instead of a hard drive - - Not even close. Zero points.
• …Will Tiger be [...] friendly for a January ‘06 launch of Intel-based hardware? - - Apparently Tiger will be just fine on Intel hardware. (Anyone else think this is a “Let’s get the proof in the pudding” kind of deal?)
• As for the iTheater thing… That would be cool and I hope to see something like that - - but it seems too “early adopter” - - Well, at least I got this one. But it’s worthless because this was the silliest of all the pre MWSF memes.

Geez, I’m terrible at this game.

Anyway… Of all the post-[tag]MWSF[/tag]-announcements round-ups I’ve seen so far, this one from Unsanity is worth the weight of the rest in salt. If only for “ICBM”.

currently playing: Delerium “Innocente”

It’s time for Macworld and once again, we find ourselves compelled to give in to the net’s peer pressure and do a prediction round-up with a sprinkling of our own predictions.

Best-of-the-web style: the honorable Chuck Toporek has some well thought-out predictions and a mini round-up of his own over on MacDevCenter. Highlight reel includes some references to the inevitable iLife update, maybe something else in the software department, something in from hardware, and some speculation on what he calls “the $64,000 question”. Toporek’s speculation on what he calls “iTheater” is worth the 20 seconds if nothing else:

Now I know you’re all thinking that I’m smoking from a crack pipe, but c’mon, think about it. If you have a component in your home theatre system, you want it to turn on when you hit the Power button on the remote, right? Well, that same theory would apply to an iTheatre device. You don’t want to wait for an operating system to boot and load from disc. If you have a lightweight version of the operating system that can live on flash memory, you’ll get an instant on, and when it needs to do something more complex, then and only then will it need to access the disc to launch a program or provide some other service. Again, it’s all about speed, and when it comes to your home theatre, you want that device to turn on when you want to use it, not 30- or 60-seconds later. Now, now, now!

And he’s gathered up some of the best (be it funny or informative) speculation in the lead-up to this year’s Macworld:

• Dave Taylor - I’m just dying to see a Mac Tablet PC. [...] I call it the “PowerPad” [...] we just need to switch to the Intel hardware.
• Chris Adamson - Overhaul .Mac, slash its price, do both, or just nuke it…
• François Joseph de Kermadec - Keynote rocks but Pages still has the blues.
• Giles Turnbull - An Intel-powered, incredibly small, lightweight, no optical drive iBook…
• Tom Bridge - The mini will morph into a media center like device featuring cable card access and an iPod dock built into the upper face, and add SPDIF out for home theatre sound.

Interesting to me: Toporek didn’t touch on Spiers’ wishlist-style prediction about the Powerbook nano nor the iWeb rumor.

And what do I think? (Who cares?) iLife ‘06 is a given - - minor revisions all around with some new deployment of FrontRow and maybe Photo Booth; the iWeb thing is probably a red herring; the Podcast Studio thing is a minor possibility (but that’s just me, I don’t “get” the podcast meme). iWork ‘06 we’ll see, too - - Keynote will get a minor update, Pages a major update (but not the one it needs), and we’ll get “Numbers”. Hardware - - this is the big one isn’t it? - - first round of Intel hardware will be the iBooks. While I would agree that it’s the Powerbooks that are “due” for the speed-bump, they just got the graphics bump so we won’t see them until WWDC around June-ish. Nope. We’ll get iBooks with that so-called “Yonah” Intel core and maybe (just maybe) they’ll be stuffed with flash memory instead of a hard drive. Or will we? Will Tiger be really and truly and fully consumer-deployment-friendly for a January ‘06 launch of Intel-based hardware? Or is that more of a “Hey, we’re just about to release Leopard” sort of thing? Na… As for the iTheater thing… That would be cool and I hope to see something like that - - but it seems too “early adopter” to be ready for primetime quite yet.

Last but not least, let me echo Adamson re: .Mac: Overhaul features, slash price or nuke it.

[tags]Macworld, Apple, iLife, iWork, .Mac, PowerPad, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iBook, iWeb, iTheater, Chuck Toporek[/tags]